SellMojo is a Social Commerce company started by 3 entrepreneurs who wanted to make setting up an online store a 60 second process.
It’s an unique application that enables merchants to create their very own storefront, on their Facebook page, where Facebook’s 1 billion users can discover products and shop without ever leaving the social network.
As brands look to social media for new ways to build their identity, SellMojo helps them monetize their Facebook presence and turn “fans” into valuable customers.
Along with providing a free payment gateway (the hardest part about setting an e-commerce store) SellMojo also provides customers with an absolutely easy-to-use interface making a store setup a 60 second process. Currently, they have over 500 merchants who are enabling their fans to enjoy an impulse and easy buy.
We had an opportunity to talk to Nameet Potnis, Founder, and know more about SellMojo and s-commerce.
S-commerce stores are very rare to find, what are the benefits of having a s-commerce store over an e-commerce one?
In India, people have taken to shopping online. When offline shopping is a social experience where you go out with friends or family, why shouldn’t the online experience be similar? The advantages of social commerce are manifold:
- There are around 71 million Indians on Facebook as of 2013.
- Customers/ fans like a merchant’s page and can also shop on Facebook itself.
- Since customers spend so much time here, they are comfortable, sharing, liking and asking for opinions on products within Facebook.
- Facebook’s edge rank also helps the merchant’s product get visibility throughout the ecosystem.
- 68% fans visit a retailer‘s Facebook pages to keep up to date with sales and promotions.
- 51% of those who like a brand on Facebook are more likely to buy from it.
You already have a Freemium model, but you are also providing a Free trial, what are the conditions of free trial?
Keeping in line with our vision is to simplify online commerce, we have a Free plan and a paid plan. This ensures that anyone can setup a store and use it free for life. Along with a Free store, we have multiple partners for providing payment gateways to our registered as well as unregistered merchants. Our tie-ups with Logistics providers ensure that our merchants get all the services needed to start selling online in one place.
You guys provide global CDN which makes the site smooth and fast and also there’s no bandwidth limit for SellMojo customers. Can you tell us something about the technology behind SellMojo?
At SellMojo, We primarily deal with two types of customers:
Consumer: These type of customers are small and medium sized companies who have multiple products and need stronger support services.
Enterprise: These customers have SKU’s ranging from 1000 to 10,000+
Our technology ensures that the product loading time for each and every product is the same irrespective of which type of customer they are. We are constantly optimizing our service offering for our enterprise clients, we pass on the same technology to our Consumer clients as well.
SellMojo is India’s first company which helps build f-commerce stores. How has been the journey so far? What are the obstacles you are facing and you have overcome?
A lot of enterprising individuals already sell on Facebook by uploading pictures in their Fan page’s photo album and putting details there and asking people to bank transfer the money, after which they ship the product. These were the first set of people to jump onboard because they knew the power of Facebook for commerce and we helped them streamline everything. All their products were displayed in a single gallery, they could categorise their products and their fans could “BUY” from right on their pages.
Having said that, there are a lot of people out there who want to set up businesses online and since we have come out of beta only 4 months ago, we are still in the process of putting ourselves in their minds.
For larger enterprises, selling on Facebook is still a new concept. For them SellMojo can be an excellent marketing tool. We help them introduce their products to their passionate fans right on their Facebook page.
One thing we couldn’t find on your website and we would like to ask. Tell us something about the founding team behind Inscripts. Also can we have a team photo.
We are 3 entrepreneurs Anant Garg, Anuj Garg and Nameet Potnis who want to make the process of selling online extremely simple. One of our features at SellMojo is that your store is setup and ready for business in 90 seconds. Design and UI is very important to us and we periodically add as well as remove features to ensure a simple and highly effective product.
Is team Inscripts bootstrapped or have you received fundings?
We are bootstrapped. We work with an agile team.
What are the new products we can expect to see in the future from team inscripts?
We are excited about the SellMojo marketplace, this will be a design store, a place where you can find items from funky brands. We will also be adding a new vertical this quarter.
What are your future plans for SellMojo?
Like we mentioned earlier, our vision is to simplify online commerce. We are creating an ecosystem where the merchant has to maintain a single inventory and their products have multiple avenue for sales. For e.g. currently a merchant like Naina Redhu has uploaded her photography prints for sale in the SellMojo Admin Panel. Her prints can be bought from multiple locations like – her Facebook store, her website, our marketplace (coming by the end of this month) and native apps across mobile platforms (Coming by end of August).
